A Friendly Experiment
by Xekstrin
Summary: Piper has one week to prove to herself that she isn't being haunted by the very bored ghost of a certain empress. PiperXDead!Cyclonis.
1. Inspired by A Friendly Wager

**A/N:** Yes, folks! Yet ANOTHER foray into the Storm Hawks universe that has to do with Cyclonis being awesome. But I just got the slash bug in my veins… And the Cyclonis bug. I swear to god, I love pairing her up with everybody so they can resist her long enough to realize she's irresistible. Biased? Who, me? Surely you must be mistaken. Cyclonis and Piper are the fansluts of the show; they can and have been paired with just about everyone else, including each other. Which is of course one of my favorite pairings.

This is entirely inspired by Insaneiac The Maniac's lemon, "A Friendly Wager". Hence the villain/hero seme/uke relationship, if something as twisted as this can be called a relationship. And hence the title of this story.

Does this make me awful? I'm not sure. All I know is this is also a loose sequel to "At Any Cost" which is also a reply to another fanfiction writer, miss PhaerynTao, and her story "Iron Maiden." This required no thought process. This is sheer for the lulz, as are most of my Cyclonis pairings. And no, despite my initial wants, this will not be M-rated at any point. Desu desu desu desu. Maybe.

Also I'm gonna try and keep it to five chapters only, not like Shades (which is almost done anyways).

So yeah! Enjoy!

**OoOoOo **

I pick up a bust from where it lies, innocent, on my bedside table. It's Charles Darwin, the only naturalist among my collection of philosophers. I test it in my hands, feel the weight and solidity of it, feel the smooth and sharp angles beneath my roaming fingertips, and deciding that this would do nicely I take the bust and I hurl it towards the apparition in my room, screaming obscenities at her. It flies at her, and her visage cracks into a thousand shards of silver glass that fall to the floor.

...

Perhaps I should rewind a little.

It all started exactly two months ago today. Or actually, it all really started when the Aurora Stone was stolen and the Storm Hawks had to prove their worth by getting it back from the clutches of Master Cyclonis herself. Either way, Cyclonis was dead now, as dead as a dead person can death. Aerrow killed her, I saw it myself. So what's the problem with that? She deserved to die- I can say that now with more vehemence than I did at her short, short trial. See, back then I still felt pity for her. Back then I didn't realize she was an evil witch and she was just... just fucking psycho, and awful.

So she's dead now, thank God. So what's the problem?

The problem now is that for the last two months she's been showing up in my bedroom mirror. Not anymore, though, 'cause I have effing _had it_, and as you can plainly see I broke the mirror. No more mirror, no more Cyclonis.

Problem solved.

"I love how simple your mind can be sometimes," Cyclonis purrs from behind me, and I lurch forward, the glass crunching under my bare feet, the sharp pain causing tears to spring to my eyes. There she is- only no longer was she confined to the mirror. She stands larger than life in front of me, neither in her regal cloak nor the pink get up she wore as Lark, but nondescript black clothing. Maybe silk. Maybe linen. Either way, it's her face that of course draws all my attention, the smirk on her long, thin lips.

"Doesn't that hurt?" she wants to know now, looking pointedly at my feet, which were bleeding freely onto the floor. I don't say anything, just stand there, staring at her, hoping against hope that she would vanish in a puff of smoke, disintegrate and filter into the air ducts directly above her. But then I would be breathing her... breathing her atoms...

Four heavy thunders sound against my door- Aerrow's fist, knocking. "Piper!" he says. "Are you OK? Piper?"

"You know they're going to ask what happened," Cyclonis says as I gingerly tip toe over to the door, sliding it open and staring now at Aerrow with the blankest possible face I could manage. "Oh my, how ever are you going to explain _this _one, Piper?"

The doors swing open a little more. If Aerrow sees Cyclonis standing behind me, he gives no notice. "Are you OK?" he asks again.

"Yep. Perfectly fine. Little lab accident- nothing to worry about."

Not believing me, he peers into the room, and I turn around to see Cyclonis directly behind us. She waves at me, and Aerrow sees nothing. "Is that-" he says, almost choking on the words, his eyes growing large. My heart leaps into my throat. Does he see her? Could we take her together and knock her out? "Jesus Piper, is that _blood_?"

"What?" I gaze at the shattered mirror where I had stepped, my bloody footprints, my messy feet. "…That mess over there? Nah- just some chemicals. You know. Polishing acids. Distillates. The whole chemistry kit. Now if you don't mind, I'm busy."

I shut the door and turn my back to it, leaning against the cold steel frame as my mind whirls. The last thing I need Aerrow to know is that I'm seeing ghosts- or that I might possibly be losing my mind. _Do people just... lose it? Do people just go crazy like this?_ I watch Cyclonis, transparent and solid, perch herself on the edge of my bed and cross her legs at the knee, waiting patiently for me to do something. The throb of my feet reminds me I need to get off of them soon.

"Get off the bed," I finally tell her, and she complies with a graceful shrug. I limp over to the bed and collapse, the pain in my feet now more important than even a dead dictator in my room. Once my vision clears and my breathing is under control again, I sit up and examine my feet to learn the extent of the damage.

It's bad.

"Hey... you," I say to her, and she looks up, expression polite. It instantly makes me suspicious. "Are you corporeal? Real?"

"Certainly."

"Then open up that drawer and take out the tweezers. Bring them to me."

"Psh. Why should I?"

"Because my feet are full of glass splinters and it hurts to walk, Your Highness!" I snap at her. In response, she laughs. To say _this makes me mad _would have to be the understatement of the year. In fact the only thing that keeps me from snapping again is that Aerrow would definitely know something is up if I did that and that there's nothing handy and heavy nearby to throw at her. "Listen, you! If you're not going to be a helpful poltergeist, I swear I'll get this place exorcised. Even if it means everyone looking at me like I'm a cracked vase!"

"You are a cracked vase. And that's why I'm laughing, because you're trying to prove you're not- trying to prove I'm real- by forcing me to do something to affect this world. It's such a Piper thing to do- experiment with her ghost."

"You're not my ghost. You're Cyclonis's ghost."

"As you say." The tweezers appear in my hand and I hold them tightly, heart hammering as I try not to look up at her, standing right in front of me. The drawer is open. She had opened it, picked up the tweezers, and brought them to me.

But that didn't mean she was real.

I ignore her, plucking out loose shards from my feet. Or at least I try to ignore her.

"Anything else, Piper?"

"Yeah. Leave me alone."

"I think you know by now I'm not going to do that."

"_Then why are you here?" _I shout at her, throwing down the tweezers in agitation, my hands gripping at the sheets to my bed until my knuckles turn white. "Can you at least tell me that?" My breathing comes fast and I clench my eyes shut, hoping against hope that when I open them she'll be gone. I only open them when I feel a feather-soft pressure on my lap- of the tweezers, miraculously there again.

Then another pressure, a dip in the mattress as she sits down next to me, hands on her lap and eyes on my face. She doesn't say anything, just sits there- or my hallucination sits there, my hallucination tells my brain that since she's sitting there I should feel the other weight on my mattress and my fake surroundings responded to that- and stays silent. That's one thing that's different about this Cyclonis than- (I'm tempted to say "the real Cyclonis" but that would mean this isn't the real Cyclonis... and that would mean I'm crazy.) than the Cyclonis I had known in life. She doesn't talk as much, doesn't shoot off her mouth at every opportunity. Her few remarks are either cutting, disturbing, completely untrue, or absolutely meaningless.

"What do you want?" I find myself whispering, not to her, but to the floor. My hands cover my face like blinders on a horse so that I can see nothing but what's ahead of me, but that doesn't stop me from _feeling _her there. "What do you want with me? Why haunt me? I'm not the one who killed you, Lark."

"Are you saying I should haunt Aerrow instead? Drive him nuts? Is that what _you _want?"

"No!" I say at once, shocked into sitting up straight and looking at her, eyes wide with horror. "Don't you dare!"

Her voice is mild. "OK. I'll stay right here then, if you don't mind."

I glower at her. She smiles, and says nothing. "Still.." I say.

"Yes?"

"Why me?"

Cyclonis doesn't answer, just shrugs. I'm not about to accept that. "Then why can I see you completely now, and before you used to stay in the mirror?"

"Well, you broke the mirror, so there was no other way to see you than to be here."

I'm not sure that logic is very sound. But then, nothing about this encounter is sound, in any way. I turn aside from her, picking at my poor, bleeding feet and wondering how on earth I was going to explain this to Aerrow- the broken mirror and my limping gait weren't going to magically vanish. Finally, Cyclonis lets out a long sigh, rolling her eyes towards heaven. I glare at her, sitting next to me, and I would punch her if I wasn't scared that I might actually feel her- a ghost no one could see- or even worse if I couldn't feel her, which would only be one more argument against her being real and for me being stark raving mad.

"If you have no reason for staying here, then leave," I tell her. "Or is that it? You're just trying to drive me nuts, for no good reason? Man, you ghosts must have a lot of time on your hands."

"I was hoping we could talk," Cyclonis says at last- finally, a straight answer! One that makes sense!

But still I keep my guard up. "About what?"

"About you. About why you're still here. You ask me- _why am I here? _when in reality it is yourself you should be asking that question to."

"I know why _I'm _here. That's why I'm asking _you_, because all _you _do all day is... is... hang about my mirror. And now you apparently hang about my room. I have a job to do, and I'm happy to do it."

"If you did, I wouldn't be here. I could leave right now, but you would have to push me away. You keep saying you want me to leave but you don't really mean it- not any more than you mean it when you pass someone in the hallway and say 'good morning'. There's no substance."

"No substance!" I say, feeling a bubble of psychotic laughter build in my throat. "This coming from a frickin _ghost_? No substance! You're the one who-"

What happens next makes me gasp, my very breath caught in my throat. I had raised my hands- both of them, palms towards her. I was going to strike at her, push her, hit her somehow. I don't know exactly. All I know is that my anger peaked at that moment, my rage, and I wanted to hurt her. It was a violent need, an urge, and I knew I would feel no release until I had abused her somehow the way I felt abused, scared her, cowed her, and so I lifted my arms.

But she catches me by the wrists, pulling out my arms so that they're stretched to the limit, reaching over her shoulders as she looks at me with quiet, patient benevolence. As if she knew this was going to happen and she had been preparing for it. For right now.

I can feel her.

Encircling my wrists.

She's real.

And then the expression on her face changes. It's subtle, and it's not harsh, or scary, but it's definitely there. I have no idea what to call it, except curiosity. She's looking at me like I'm a crystal- not a rare crystal in any sense, but definitely quirky, like flint and steel to the imagination. And then her grip tightens on my wrists and she pushes on them in a way they were not meant to go. Slowly. And I, frightened into silence and into immobility, do nothing as the pressure increases on my wrists as she tries to bend them backwards.

I know what she's doing.

She's experimenting on me, to see my boundaries. What I can do. Where I can go. What doesn't work.

Like I'm a crystal in her lab.

And the pain is slowly but undeniably growing. "Lark, stop- _stop_-!" I flail, pulling away from her, trying to wrench myself free. She holds fast, but the experimentation has stopped for now as she tries to simply keep her grip on me. "You're hurting me! You-"

I made the mistake of trying to kick at her, and a chunk of glass I had neglected to pull out wedges itself deeper into me. It's as effective to my anger as a bucket full of cold water. I whimper, hunching forward in a spasm of pain until my face bumps against her chest, warm and pillow soft. Her grip loosens on my wrists but only to slide up along my gooseflesh-ridden arms to rest on my shoulders, holding me there. I'm confused, to say the least, and scared that she'll hurt me again.

And hurt me again she does.

Without warning one hand grabs my hair and yanks on it, forcing my head back and leaning over me so that I looked up at her and directly into her cool, disconnected eyes. I can feel her fingers massaging my scalp where it still stung from my hair almost getting ripped out and her other hand- her other hand touches my face. It's her fingertips only, probing, curious, seeking for their senses to be fulfilled. Can she sense? Is she real? Am I here alone, and if Aerrow walks in would he see me looking only at the ceiling? Her fingers hold my face in place while her thumb strokes my cheek until they sink downwards to pinch together just beneath my chin to keep my head in place.

"May I continue?"

The sheer cordial tone of her voice is perhaps more shocking than the words themselves, more shocking than the tender caress of her hands and the sudden, intense violence of her mood swings, her experimentation on me. I shake my head no, quickly.

"I promise I won't hurt you again," she says, and it might be my imagination but I swear there's a wheedling tone in her voice.

"Wh-why do you want to?" I ask her, inching away as inconspicuously as I could manage. With the realization that I am, in fact, sitting here with the ghost of Cyclonis, or at least with some sort of apparition that could do me harm, comes an unnamable fear. I can't control this. I can't get help. No one could help me, because no one could feel this or see this-

-except me.

"Why do I want to hurt you?" Cyclonis repeats slowly, tasting the words, taking them into careful consideration. I'm on the verge of telling her _that's not what I meant _when she answers the question I didn't ask:

"Mmm.. Well… Because I derive sexual pleasure from it, I suppose."

I clamp down on my tongue, heart keening with terror. "So..." I manage to wrestle with my vocabulary- "So why... why do you want to touch me, then?"

"I would venture that it's for the same reason. Only milder."

Overwhelming emotion fills me. Timidity, fear... and outrage. "Christ," I say.

"He has nothing to do with this."

"You're a _ghost_."

"And you're a sentimental fool." _Don't change the subject! _I try to say, but her fingers press over my lips and my throat constricts with the sudden urge to open my mouth and lip at her fingers, tease at the edge of the nails with my teeth..."Love's cheap for you, Piper," she says, her voice breaking through my trance as she scoots closer, and in response I scoot further away, and on an on this game plays across the bed until I'm pressed up against the headboard, my face turned away from her. "Can't you see it, even now? You'd love a ghost. Right here, not a few dozen feet from your friends."

"You... You..." I say, but I can't seem to get past that one monosyllable, my mind still roiling with the unwelcome way I reacted to her hands on my mouth.

Her face moves closer to mine, her breath against my cheek and ear, sending ripples right down the length of that side of my body. "Aren't you supposed to contradict me now?" she whispers, and then something hot and wet languorously slides along my cheek to the shell of my ear. The sensation of her tongue- of being violated this way- makes me snap back to my senses and I shove her away from me, hard.

"You little freak," I finally manage to hiss, bracing myself against the headboard, tensing for a fight.

She grins at me, crouching on all fours a little further down the bed- the bed smeared with the blood from my feet, which I realize a little too late are in her convenient range of grasp. She pulls on one of my feet, sitting back so that it rests in her lap, and rips out a chunk of mirror. I let out a shout, a cry of pain, but the noise is cut short as she lunges at me, tackles me down, and pushes her hand against my mouth to smother it. I bite her and her hand recoils at once, blood dripping onto the already soiled mattress.

I open my mouth to shout again when I feel a particularly large chunk of glass pressed against my throat, and Cyclonis hissing at me... "_Not another sound_."

I shallow my breathing at once, keeping as still as possible.

"Now…" Cyclonis says, her voice mellowing again from that strangled hiss. "Think carefully, Piper, because I'm going to ask you a question. What." She pulls the glass shard down so that it rests against my collarbone, letting me breathe easier. "Are." Then she sits back, and I, stunned, don't know what she's doing until- "You." -she pulls out the tweezers, rests my foot on her lap again, and tenderly starts to care for my wounds. "Doing." She plucks out a minute sliver and holds it up to me, purple eyes intense. "Here? And don't you dare say it's because you want to," she warns, shaking the sliver at me.

I think seriously on the question, because like it or not it had been clouding my mind lately. Maybe this apparition- this haunting- was a result of my own insecurities. If I put everything to rest, would Cyclonis leave me alone? So I tell her the truth. "I'm here because I have to take care of them."

"Ah." Cyclonis smiles thinly, as if I were only verifying a conclusion she had come to on her own. "And you can't hire a nanny?"

"It's more than tha- ow!" I shrink backwards as she ruthlessly digs inside my wounds to extract the glass shards. "Careful!"

"Yes, Your Highness."

"S…shut up."

"Certainly, Your Highness."

"They're my friends!" I say to her, wondering if Aerrow had his ear pressed to the door, wondering if he could hear everything or just a one-sided conversation with me and my ghost. "And friends take care of each other."

"Seems a little… _one_-_sided_ if you ask me," Cyclonis says, reaching over the side of the bed to rummage around for the wound salve. I'm about to argue with her when I freeze, a sudden thought ramming into me like a shot from Finn's crossbow. That word… one-sided. Why did she put so much emphasis on that word? Was it coincidence that I had thought that very same word an instant before she said it? I watch her carefully as she straightens herself, having found the balm and was now applying it to my sore feet. But despite the casual nature of her actions, the sneaky little grin on her face only grew larger and larger and…And then there was that first comment she had made to me, crashing all my relief at having finally broken the mirror…_I love how simple your mind can be_…

No.

_No_.

That's…

"Go on," she prompts me, eyes flashing up towards me for a brief moment. "Say it."

_Oh, shit_.

"Yep, that about sums it up."

"You can't," I say, voice shaking. "That's impossible."

"I can't what? Go on, I want to hear you say it out loud."

I shake my head.

"Go on!" she urges, grinning. "Say- _You're reading my mind_! It's going to be so cute when your voice goes all high pitched and scared and squeaky."

"You are _not_- you _can't_ be-"

She laughs in delight, rocking backwards and throwing her head back. "See?" she says gleefully. "There you go!"

"This is not happening," I say firmly, but I recoil in shock as I realize she had said the words at the exact time I did. "Don't do that!" we snap at each other. "Stop it!" she says, in time with me. I clam my mouth shut, and so does she.

"You see?" I say shakily, and this time she doesn't echo me. "This is just another proof that you're not real. Mind reading is impossible, like ghosts, and if you're a figment of my imagination of course you can see what's in my mind, because my mind is where you came from!"

Cyclonis frowns, shaking her head. "You're stubborn as always," she sighs. "OK, if I was a figment of your imagination, why would I do this?" and she- damn her- she digs her nails into my feet again, but this time I'm prepared. I slap her hands away, grabbing her and pushing her again. But she does something I didn't expect- she doesn't fight back. Instead she falls back with the motion of the shove and pulls me back with her. There's a moment when I'm on top of her and she looks up at me with wide, innocent purple eyes, but in the next second she had me pinned down again.

"Hey now," she says slyly, cocking her head to the side like a curious puppy. "You seemed to like it when _you_ were on top… You might be- _'Let me go'_!" she shouts at the same time I do, and then laughs at me. "Come on, Piper. We're stuck together for a while, so we might as well make use of the time we have… right?"

I strain against her, terrified to find that she was even stronger as a ghost than she had been in real life. "Why do you keep doing this?" I finally ask in desperation.

"Doing what?" she asks, blinking.

"Keep-" I start to explain, but then I cut myself short. "Well if you can read my mind, why are you asking, huh?!"

"Because I like the sound of your voice. _You see? There you go again_," she says in time with me, but this time I'm not going to stay silent. Let her play along if she wants to.

"You keep on… I don't know what's the word for it- flirting with me! Pinning me down! Making all theses passes on me!" we accuse each other. "Will you stop mimicking me already?"

"Piper, mimicking would be me saying the same thing you do _after_ you say it." Cyclonis tightens her grip on my arms, shifting so that she straddles me instead of kneeling on me. I wasn't sure if this was a good development, because now instead of crushing me she's… well she's in a very awkward position.

"It's not _awkward_," Cyclonis says. "It's _sensual_. Now, take pity on a sad, lonely little ghost, and lie still. I'm going to kiss you now."

I stiffen. "The hell you are!"

"You don't want me to?"

"Of course I don't!"

"That's not what you're thinking."

"Well, you know what?" I say, and I put special emphasis on each word. "I am not a bitch in heat." Her face darkens in anger but I don't let that stop me. "I'm a human being. And I can control myself. So get the fuck off."

Cyclonis doesn't say anything. The silence stretches on after my words and I feel myself break out into a cold sweat, wondering what she would do next, and whether or not I was safe in a white padded cell at this very moment, banging my head against the wall while inside my own mind I was in the hands of this woman.

"Well," she says at last."Well…" she says again, her voice breaking through the confused cloud that enshrouds my brain right now. Then an idea strikes her and her eyes visibly light up with mischief. "_Don't_ think about what you would do if you were in my position right now," she orders me. It takes me a moment to realize what she means and then it hits me- and of course when you're told not to think about something your mind is already thinking about it. Her laughter floats around me and I burn with shame, knowing that she could see my every thought.

"I… I don't want to do anything!" I stammer, and even I can hear the lies in my voice. Yeah I was a little… _bent_… but I didn't want anything to do with _Cyclonis_. Maybe once upon a time, but not anymore. Definitely not anymore.

"Nothing at all?" she asks. "No kissing? No touching?"

"Maybe you didn't understand the first time I said it. You're _dead_."

"Well, it's not like being dead is a lot of fun," Cyclonis defends herself. "And I'd always wanted something like this while I was alive, so… Not like I have anything to lose by making you miserable." Maybe seeing that my thoughts are still rebellious, she frowns and lets me go, slowly sitting up with the air of one rejected.

"OK.. So… what?" I ask her, also sitting up but not running away this time because at this point I think I've crossed some sort of threshold. No longer is this weird. I'm just going with the flow now. "Wait. Is this like those weird ghost stories where the protagonist has to save the ghost, and the ghost is only around because of some lingering regret in the real world, like catching its murderer, or finding its long lost treasure? Only in your case it's just that you want to _have sex_ with me?"

Cyclonis grins. "It could very well be that. And if that's the case, are you just going to sit there and let me suffer?"

"Hardy har-har," I sneer. "I could get rid of you just as easily if that's the case. All I need is a holy man and a bottle of water."

"But my way, you get the ride of your afterlife."

"You did not just make a stupid ghost pun. Tell me you didn't."

"I'm afraid I did."

I groan. This is worse than being stuck with Finn. At least Finn didn't try to seduce me with weird sadomasochistic sex. I bet for her this is some sort of foreplay. And I bet she's reading this right now. _Aren't you?_

"Yes. And trust me, I haven't even started foreplay yet."

Shit! How am I supposed to get out of this one if she'll see every move before I make it?

"You don't."

_Stop that! _I shake my head, banging my palm against my brow for a few moments. "I mean, stop that!" I say out loud, refusing to continue this one-sided telepathy. "Listen. This is ridiculous. You can't seriously say you came back from the dead to try and seduce me."

Cyclonis is still pouting, one leg dangling from the edge of the bed to swing lightly in the air. "I don't know why I came back," she says at last. "Two months ago I was bleeding my life out in front of the crowd. And now I find myself on board the _Condor_ with my inhibitions alarmingly nonexistent. So I was trying, Piper, to have a conversation with you when my head went out the window."

That was the change in her face that I saw…

"I guess it must have been. This is right before I started hurting you, right?"

"Stop. Reading_. _Mymind."

"I can't help it!"

"Then leave me alone if you can't help yourself."

She pauses again, lips pursed in thought. "No," she says after careful deliberation. At my growl of frustration she shushes me, one finger in the air. "But!" she says, "I have an idea. I can still sense that you have doubts about my existence, so I propose we strike a deal."

Despite myself, I'm curious. "What kind of deal?"

"You get to experiment on me as much as you want," Cyclonis says. "For a set amount of time. If at the end of that time you still don't believe me to be real- and I'll know if you do- I get to do whatever I want with you. And before you say 'no', this only works if you're one hundred percent, absolutely, positively, beyond-a-doubt _certain_ that I am not a figment of your imagination. If you still have any doubts at all, the deal is off."

I don't say anything.

"If by the end of the time you still have doubts, I'll leave. Forever. What's more, I'll wipe all traces of me from the last two months out of your mind. You'll be completely rid of me, and you'll never see me again for as long as you live." She shrugs. "And when you die, well, we'll make a new deal depending on your point of view then."

"You're awfully laid back," I notice. "Cyclonis wasn't like that. Cyclonis was all, If-I-Can't-Have-You-No-One-Can. About everything."

"Infinity changes one's perspective on certain things."

"And yet you still want to get in my pants." _That_ sure hasn't changed…

"Don't be so crude, dear. I simply want to express strong emotions. And feel good. That's pretty much the life of a ghost- the good and the bad and nothing in between."

"Pretty much the same as the life of a Storm Hawk. And you, my friend, were most definitely bad."

"I'm still bad. And I revel in my badness while you stand on your soapbox and tell the masses how they should be good like you while on the inside you really want the same things they do. To hurt the people you don't like. And to have the people you _do_ like please you. Humans are perverse, selfish creatures, and you are a fine example of one." She lowers her head to grin up at me, sadistic and sinister. "Just like me."

I raise my hands for silence, having had enough of her and her break from ghostly silence. This was more like the Cyclonis I had known- always running her mouth. In that respect she wasn't unlike Finn. They both loved to hear themselves talk. "Give me a week," I tell her. She perks up at this.

"You agree to the deal?" she says.

"Only if you _promise_ you'll leave me alone. Oh yeah- and during the week, if I say I need silence, I mean it. Leave me in silence. I can't work otherwise."

"Deal." She stretches out her hand, and I shake it, wondering if by the end of the week I would look back and marvel at how I was able to shake hands with thin air and vivid imagination.


	2. My ThenBoyfriend Would Do That Often

**A/N:** Here's the second chapter. Again, zero thought process. And probably more than a little OOCness from Cyclonis's part to make her a more cute ghost. D'aww.

If Lark had a few more guest episodes before her inevitable outing as Master Cyclonis, I shiver to think of all the extra opportunities for fandom there would have been. (Think Terra from Teen Titans, how she had around four episodes before she went kaput). This is shameless, shameless fanpoodleing, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

Enjoy! And.. Review!

**"And if you could talk to me tell me if it's so/ that all the good girls go/ to heaven/ well heaven knows..."**

**-"This Is How I Disappear" by My Chemical Romance.**

**OoOoOo**

"Hey!" Cyclonis says on the first day. I had retreated to my room after breakfast to find it empty- only the minute I relaxed and sat down she popped up behind me, strangely warm hands gripping my shoulders as she leaned down to talk to me. "I've got an idea how to prove I'm real. Here- _Baaaahh_...!"

Before I can move I can feel what could only be her _entire freaking tongue_, thickly coated with spit, dragging from the side of my chin up along my cheek while making that ridiculous, childish noise. With a cry of disgust I shove her away from me. She stumbles backwards, cackling meanly (even as I register that I can touch her- and maybe even hurt her).

It's an uphill battle not to take advantage of the fact that she could feel me and vice versa in the worst way possible. But as she hovers- not literally, mind you- nearby with that insufferable grin on her face I know she just wants me to lose my temper. So I just blank out completely until my rage drains away and I'm left with a cool, mild feeling of distance from the world.

"I have one week to prove you're real," I remind her, and she takes a step back at the chilly tone of my voice. "It's in your best interest to help me prove that, isn't it?"

"Mm-hmm," she says.

"So it's in your best interest to do what I say."

I can see on her face that I have her there. "Fine. I'll do what you say so long as it's going towards me being real in your mind. I hate losing."

I turn in my seat, one arm resting across the low back of the chair and my chin propped on top of it so that I could look at her. "Then answer this question- Why can only I see or feel you?"

Cyclonis goes silent, her previous frivolity lost with the solemn, dark eyes of one who is cornered.

"Well?"

"The Oblivion Crystal," she says at last, crossing her arms and glancing away.

I frown, remembering the stone that had sealed my victory over her- my psychological victory, after the point where I had already proved I could whoop her scrawny ass physically. "What about it?" I ask. As far as I was concerned, it had vanished along with her empire.

"When I used it, it opened up a... a connection. A portal that neither of us could see, and no living scholar was ever able to record and thus it remained unknown save for those few to whom it happened... A connection... between two people," she finishes, her last three words a bare, stifled mumble.

"But that's not true," I say. "If it's just you and me, why can you affect things like the tweezers from yesterday?" And the bed... when she sat down, she had weight. Density. There was an actual person here who could alter her surroundings like a normal person. Maybe. I could always be insane.

"What's sane about any of this?" Cyclonis had to wonder, as if she wasn't the one pretending everything was normal. I decline the urge to answer and instead wipe at my face again, grimacing at the ooze- still warm, like her. I'd noticed that, despite all the ghost stories I'd ever heard, I felt no cold aura around her when she was near, or when she touched me. She even had a pulse, like a living person. In fact, the only hint that she gave that she wasn't normal was the fact that no one could see or hear her- except for yours truly- and that she apparently could read minds.

"Yeah, I think it's weird too," she muses under her breath. I look up at her, making a noise of confusion, and she shrugs. "I don't know why I'm not rotting or anything. I'm pretty sure this isn't my body- I'm pretty sure I don't even have a body anymore. Or if I do, it's got a big bloody gash where my heart used to be."

For the first time I feel a chill from her- the type you read about in ghost stories. A shiver rolls through my whole body as I remember that day, two months ago. I never did see what happened to her body after Aerrow killed her...

Suddenly Cyclonis kneels in front of me, sitting back on her heels as she looks up at my face. Lifting one hand, she passes it straight through the solid wood of my desk. "I am dead," she says like she's reassuring me of that fact. "I might be here, but don't think this is an elaborate hoax..." her nostrils flare in a snort and she turns her head aside, smiling at me, almost with disdain, and watching me from the corner of her eyes. "Why would I waste my time on a ridiculous hoax like this, anyway?"

I shrug, a half-hearted answer. I still don't even think she's real, so it's no concern to me what she thinks. She scowls at me, probably having heard what I just thought. Hmph.

"What turns you on?" she blurts out, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a proud shake of her head. She's looking straight at me now, a wicked smile gracing her features.

_What turns me_-?! My face heats up in zero-point-five seconds flat. I know where this is going_. Don't. Don't. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it! Don't think a bite it! AH SHI-_

Cyclonis grins, leans forward, and chomps down on the handiest available spot- my knee. I kick at the floor and my char skids backwards, flapping my hands at her to ward her off and she falls on her back, clutching at her stomach in laughter. "Oooh, that sent tingles to interesting places, didn't it?" she says.

"Sh-shut up!"

"I had no idea you were so sensitive. Your _knee_, Piper?"

I scowl at her, rubbing at my knee frantically to try and assuage some of the leftover buzzing. It's not the kind of thing you admit out loud, but it _did_ send tingles to places that had no right to tingle. Especially not for Cyclonis. I guess she must have read my mind when it happened, because it's way too accurate a guess. "What kind of question is that, anyway?"

"I wanted to see you get flustered. Om nom nom nom." She crosses her eyes and pantomimes chewing, forcing me to get up and leave the room. It's a sad thing when my room- my supposed place of refuge- now seems to be the favorite haunt of a ghost. I rest against the steel door, massaging my temples… and then the image of her going "Om nom nom nom" suddenly strikes me again, and I burst into helpless laughter at the expression she had put on her face in that moment.

I sober up almost at once, though.

Damn it, why was it that Lark could always make me laugh? That was my weak spot, more than any sort of physical attraction, and she knew it…


	3. Stork Is Awesome And So Is Aerrow

**"Hay un fantasma en mi habitación, con pelo largo y con baby do-oll. Desaparece en la manaña- cuando despierta mi cama está mojada."**

**- "Fantasma" by Sol D'Menta.**

**OoOoOo**

OK. First stop for reconnaissance: Aerrow and Radarr.

I find the two of them on the bridge, conveniently enough. That way I can ask them and Stork at the same time, and spare myself the embarrassment of having to repeat my written speech five different times. Sauntering over to the meeting table, I pretend to just be chilling when Aerrow finally looks away from the great front glass, away from the endless blue skies.

"Oh, hey Piper. Didn't see you there."

I shrug, throat unusually dry. Does he notice anything wrong...?

"How are your feet? I saw you limping the other day..."

I swallow nothing, since my mouth is also feeling like I sucked on cotton balls in the desert for fun. "Uh- uhm, better. I have some special salve that's fixing them up like new."

He crosses his arms, giving me the Look. "You know I'm still upset with you for lying," he tells me frankly, green eyes doing that thing they do when he's giving me that Look. God, I hate the Look. I feel like a guilty child every time.

"I just felt so stupid," I say, returning to my fallback lie. It was already second nature now, on only the first day after the Deal with Cyclonis. Why, indeed, hadn't I told him I broke the mirror? "I couldn't believe I had made such a mess and- and I just lied. I didn't want you to worry."

"Hmh." He rests his back and one foot against the glass, still with his arms cross and Radarr on his shoulder like an unusual fur ornament. "Well, I'm just glad you weren't seriously hurt."

"Me too..." I mumble, before glancing at Stork. He doesn't seem to be interested in the conversation, and I'm wondering how I can include him so that I can pop the question on all three of them at once. Well. Might as well dive into it. "Um, Stork?" I say, directing my attention now to the Merb. He makes some sort of noise that might have been a reply. "I kind of have a question for you, since you seem to be the- uh- _expert_- on- uh- on death."

His left ear twitches at the word and he slowly turns his head to look at me over his shoulder, one luminous, wary yellow eye all I can see from behind the mess of jungle moss hair. "I'm listening..." he says.

"OK. This question is for you too, Aerrow, so ya might as well listen..." I take a deep breath, and then I say:

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

There's barely room for air to cushion the question after it leaves my lips when Stork answers, "Absolutely." Well, no surprise there. He also believed in vampires, though, so I'm not sure how much faith I should put into his answer.

Aerrow, predictably, takes a little longer. He strokes Radarr with one hand, even as the little guy emphatically nods his head up and down for "yes". "I don't know," he says at last, his perceptive green eyes boring into my own. Now that I know it's possible for mind reading to happen, I can almost swear that he's digging through my files right now, trying to figure out the reasons for such an odd question. I resist the urge to squirm in my seat.

"You don't?" Stork asks him in surprise, both his ears standing alert on top of his head. "How can you not know?"

"I mean I don't know," he says, voice even and patient, like it always is when he deals with Stork. "I've had a few experiences in my life that could be defined as supernatural, but not exactly a _ghost _per se. I just think it's right to keep an open mind, to be ready for anything."

I jump on this. "So you think it's possible ghosts exist?"

His green eyes don't leave mine. Not for a second.

"Anything is possible," he says at last, freeing me so that I can stumble from the room and go find Junko.

**OoOoOo**

Does Junko believe in ghosts? Yes. Finn? Not so much, except he claimed to have seen a woman in white once, walking through the forests of Amazonia only to vanish into thin air. He might have been drunk on moonshine at the time though, so the story wasn't exactly valid.

It's the end of the first day and so far, I haven't seen any flying pink elephants or suddenly sprouted tentacles, so if I'm hallucinating all this it's actually quite a mundane psychotic disturbance. At least as far as hallucinations go. If I'm actually having spasms on the floor, and these past two months have taken place in the span of a minute, I should consider myself lucky that I hadn't envisioned myself falling into Hell, complete with demons and flaming lava pits.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" I ask my reflection in the mirror, pressing my forehead against it. I sigh, fogging up the glass as tension starts to make my brain throb.

I am starting to get very, very scared.

The fog on the glass clears somewhat and I see the dim, dark silhouette of Cyclonis standing next to me. I glance sideways, seeing nothing, and then look back into the mirror as the visage of my enemy becomes even more sharp. I reach out and touch the glass, wondering if she decided to inhabit this mirror now that the one in my room is broken.

Her hand lifts as well, and in the mirror I can see her resting that pale hand on top of mine, pressing it against the glass with her fingers twined possessively over and between my own darker digits. I don't feel anything, this side of the mirror. Then, without warning, the mirror-Cyclonis starts to melt before my very eyes, her substances seeming to flow through the mirror like a puddle of colored ink, pale peach for her flesh mingling with inky black of her clothes and her hair. I take a few hurried steps back as the blob slides into a bubbling, congealed mess at my feet and Cyclonis soon forms again, crouching at first until she stands up straight, seeming to almost unfold before me.

My ghost reclines against the sink, dark eyes impassive as she watches me. "Hi," she says at last, something that others might confuse for a shy smile teasing the edges of her lips.


	4. Piper In A Bikini FTW

_It was such a small, intimate gesture, and I did it without thought. It's just the kind of thing I do- when I feel there are no words left. Why speak, after all, when we can just hold hands? Only it wasn't really holding hands, and it was just a brief moment. _

_"Yeah... I don't have many friends either."_

_I looked over at her and smiled, a true, vivid connection shining between us in that moment, hitting me like a bag of bricks. So I just rested my hand on top of hers, squeezing it once, before returning my hand to my side._

"Hey, are you asleep?"

She appears in front of my bed, kneeling to be at eye level with me. "Not exactly," she says. "What?"

I turn around, forcing my back on her.

"...Nothing."

**OoOoOo**

"Piper, wake up!"

"Nnnuh."

"Piper, wake, up!"

"Nnnuuuuuuh!" I clench my eyes shut tighter, pulling the blanket over my head. Growling, Finn yanks my protection off of me and kicks at my wall, knocking the windows open. Sunlight spills into the room and I groan, curled up into a fetal position and smothering my face into the goose down pillow. "Finn, somebody had better be dying," I tell him as he bounces on the balls of his feet like an excited puppy.

Instead of answering, though, Finn just shouts the same phrase one last time at the top of his lung. "Piper, WAKE UUUUUP!"

"NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!" I shout back at him, shooting upright to smack him across the face of the pillow. "What on earth is wrong with you?" I demand as he dances around my room with my pillow in his hand.

Finn speaks in the oddly paused rush of a child trying to remember that in order to tell a story you needed to have distinguishable words. "We landed, last night, on this Terra yeah?, and there's like, a lake, and Aerrow said, Aerrow said we could go swimming, but then, he said-"

"-You need me to check it out first," I guessed, finishing with considerable less enthusiasm than he had. "Listen, Finn, I'm working on a really… important project right now so…"

"Aww, don't be such an old woman," Lark complains, resting on my top bookshelf like some sort of cat. "Projects suck. Go outside and play."

"Yeah, right," I say out loud to her before I can remember that Finn can only hear my side of the conversation. "Like you're in any position to tell me what to do!"

Finn blinks at me and then at the empty spot I was talking to and then back again. Then he shrugs. Blond eyebrows furrowing, he twists in one spot, knees pressed together like he has to pee. "Piper?" he whines. "Please? Do you need me to make you coffee? Or breakfast? Cause I could make you breakfast. If you eat it fast."

I rub my temple, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and rubbing at my eyes. "Yeah… yeah, coffee. The coffee sounds good."

Finn salutes and runs outside my room before I can even finish my sentence. Then I can round on Lark, lips pursed tightly. "Like I was saying," I tell her, "You were always locked up in _your_ room, so-"

"-So I can tell you from experience that it sucks," she tells me flatly, rolling over so that she lies on her stomach now, chin propped up in the palm of her hand and her legs in the air, swinging lightly. "And sometimes I wished I could live on a ship like the _Condor_, so I wouldn't be stuck in one place forever, and see the places I'd read about, and…" her purple eyes had been gazing into the far off distance, but all of a sudden they snap into focus- directly on me, and she frowns thinly.

"What?" I say.

"Nothing," she says.

"Widdle Cycwonis upset that Daddy never let her out of her tower?"

"You can just shut your mouth."

"Or you could leave."

"Not until I prove you wrong."

"You can't. Cause you're not real."

Instead of responding, Lark's face splits into a savage, wickedly happy grin, eyes narrowing as she grips the edge of the bookshelf and looks down at me. Mentally, I could see her black cat tail undulating.

Thoroughly creeped out, I grabbed a purity crystal from my drawer and went out to find the lake.

**OoOoOo**

It turned out to be clean, but I used the crystal on it anyway just for extra protection. Even Stork seemed to be content with dipping his feet into the water after that precaution was taken. "I hope it doesn't rain," he says to me now as we sit side by side, looking up at the sky from between the canopy of tree leaves.

"Yeah, I'd hate to have our picnic ruined."

He shakes his head. "Not to mention the Needle Noggins that hide in the water droplets."

"Uh… yeah."

"Ya gonna jump in?" Lark asks me, sitting on my other side. "The water looks really crisp and cool."

_What do you care? _I ask her mentally. _You just want to see me in a wet bikini._

"Well, a dry bikini is fine and all…" she trails off.

"Hmph," I say out loud, putting a towel around my bare shoulders. Yeah I was in a bikini- it was the only bathing suit I owned, and I wasn't gonna let this worm stop me from being with my brothers.

"Bless you," Stork says, mistaking my snort for a sneeze.

"Hey Piper!" Finn calls from a low-hanging branch. "Check me out! Wooo!" he jumps in, creating a big splash and drenching the three of us. Lark spits out a jet of water.

"Refreshing," she says.

Finn scampers back up the tree, only higher this time. I get to my feet, cupping my hands around my mouth. "Finland!" I shout at him. "Don't you dare try jumping from any higher than that!"

"Bah!" he says, waving one hand at me. "The water'll break my fall!"

"Idiot! That's not the way water works! It's not _soft_!"

"I'll be- wah- _waaaah_!"

Finn somehow loses his footing, arms wind milling precariously for balance. That might have been fine if the branch he was currently on was over the water- sure, a belly flop might not be fun, but it was a hell of a lot better than crashing onto the ground from the height he was at. Alarmed, I ran towards the tree. "Finn!" I shout.

One pale hand grasped him around his wrist. He was sort of suspended there for a moment, back arched towards the water, and then Lark tugged and he was pulled forward. He ran right through her into the trunk of the tree, wrapping his arms around it and hyperventilating, his blonde hair seeming spikier than usual with fright.

I feel a warm body next to mine. "Hmm," is all Lark has to say, looking up at Finn with displeasure. I gape at her, and she doesn't seem to notice it at first, eyes fixated on Finn, but then she blinks and her attention snaps to me.

A single, wriggling snake of electric current runs down her face.

It's purple.

**OoOoOo**

_Slam_.

The doors to my room lock behind me as I stomp inside, dripping wet and fuming. Time to resume experimentation. I had two days left in the week and so far nothing concrete had shown up… until now. "You're not telling me everything," I accuse her, frantically sorting through the items on my desk. Crystals and vials drop to the floor and I don't care, intent on my search.

Lark jumps, one moment at my side and the next up on my bookshelf again, resting on her back and looking towards the ceiling. "Why, whatever do you mean?"

"I mean you're keeping things from me!" I shout. "Not telling me what you can do, not letting me know what you're capable of!" Then I whirl around. "Not telling me what you _are_!"

One pale hand is all I can see from this angle, lifted into the air. She seems to be studying her nails. "I'm a ghost, my dear."

"No you're not!" I wave my chosen green crystal at her. "That's not all you are and you know it! Get down here!"

Lark's eyes peek at me from the edge of the bookshelf, looking down at me warily.

"It's in your best interest to do what I say…" I somehow manage to grate out, my teeth bared in a horrible smile. "_Remember_?"

"Yeah, but I don't like what you have planned!"

"Well, you challenged me to find the truth, and here it is!" I hold up the crystal, point it at her and she ducks. "You.. You're a _crystal_!"

"Am not!" was her phantom voice.

"Then why are you so afraid of this elemos?" I ask her, tossing the crystal from side to side. It was specifically designed for hybrid crystals, in order to rip them apart to their most basic elements to see what they were composed of.

"Because… just because!"

"Good god, but you always were an awful liar…"

"Just put that thing away before you hurt somebody!"

"Fine," I snap, tossing it back inside the drawer and slamming it shut. "Happy? Now come down here!" I look up at the bookshelf expectantly, and then walk around so I'm at an angle where I could see the top shelf. She's not there. "La-?" I start, but then I feel a tap on my shoulder and whirl around and there she is.

She has her arms crossed, scowling at me. "I am not a crystal," she says. "I'm the _product_ of one, remember?"

Which only brings me to the same conclusion I would have reached anyway. Recently, I'd noticed every time she breaks some sort of physical law, that same purple energy crackles around her. The same energy I'd felt when she'd bitten me… "That means you're not Cyclonis."

Her eyes widen in shock, arms falling to her sides as she stood up a little straighter. "Of course I'm Cyclonis!"

"Are you?" I ask her, moving in a little closer. "Can you really say that you're the same girl who-" I break off, biting my lower lip.

Lark smiles thinly. "Look at it this way, Piper- if there was a girl who looked just like you, acted just like you, thought just like you, and had your memories… how do you know she's not you?"

"Well, if that other girl was created by an Oblivion crystal, I'd have to say that speaks for itself."

"I wasn't _created_ by it. I'm a _product_ of it, of when it hit you, and connected you to me."

"But that's just IT!" I resist the urge to pull out my ahair. "You're not the real Cyclonis! You- _physically_- did not step here on this floor until you broke out of my mirror."

"…No."

"No, what?"

"No… I'm not the… _real_… Cyclonis."

The statement hangs in the air. And then she flashes a grin at me, eyes dancing nervously. "But I am real, you agree, right?"

I roll my eyes heavenward, throwing my arms up into the air. "Yeah, a real fake!" I snort. "God, I can't believe this! You're…" I motion to her, unable to find the words. "You're like some sort of physical manifestation of her memories and… and _my _memories!"

"Piper." She pulls my hands down to my sides, stepping forward until our foreheads touch, and my throat clenches. "Listen to yourself for a moment, would you?"

"I…" I swallow. "What?"

She closes in, the distance between us shrinking until there's nothing but the soft, dry press of her lips against mine, the spine-tingling feeling of her lips twisting into a smile even while she kisses me. The world goes black- because my eyes are closed. The normal hum of the _Condor's_ engines is drowned out by the shuffle of feet, pounding blood in my ears, a trembling breath escaping my lips when she finally lets me go.

And the sound of her voice.

"You just said I'm real."

My eyes shoot open. There's a bridge of energy between our lips, purple and rippling like a baby bolt of lightning. It dances between us for a moment before jumping to her face, racing across her pale features and eventually dissipating. My knuckles hurt and I realize it's because I'm gripping her by the elbows too tightly, but instead of pushing her away I have her trapped against me just as surely as I'm trapped against her.

She grins even wider.

"_I win."_

**OoOoOo**

**A/N: If you want the next chapter to be limey, leave a review. If you don't want it to be limey, leave a review and cluck like a chicken three times.**


	5. This Is The Worst Story EVER

A/N: Oh my dear lord. Who here has seen "Royal Twist" yet? I effing love these Piper episodes, they're full of all these… scenes… Like that part where Piper's thrown down on the bed and you can't see from the waist down? And then she's like …. "GASP! …ooh.." and I was here I like "omfg" and then they showed the heads of the two maids and I'm like "OMFG" and it was a foot rub.

…woooowww…..

Storm Hawks: Subliminal messaging at its finest.

So yeah, I had to add something about that in this chapter. Had to.

(PS Cyclonis is now my desktop wallpaper : DDDDD! Shexy beast.)

(PPS I write very, very weird stories.)

"**All you see is red lights behind me/ Maybe this isn't what you wanted baby/ I don't blame you falling backwards/ No one's ever quite confused you this way."**

**- "Attitude" by Alien Ant Farm.**

**OoOoOo**

Tnk.

I'm met with resistance as I back up against the wall, purple snakes of energy snapping in and out of focus every time I blink as Lark advances with an innocent little smile. "Surely you remember the _rules _of our friendly experiment?" she asks me, full of false guile.

I hold up my hands, tense as I wave them from side to side in front of me. "Nononono," I stammer, "No, I mean- there's- there's a _limit _as to-"

"You didn't put any conditions on what I could or could not ask of you once I won. I think you know that." She steps into my personal space, leaning forward slightly so that she looks up at me, her hands clasped behind her back and her wide grin and snapping curls of crystal energy completely eating up my perspective of the world. "In fact, I know you know. And you're kicking yourself now for it."

She unhooks her hands from behind her back and brings them around to clasp me by my forearms, her body pressing closer. Everything about it seemed somehow premeditated, a machine-like perfection to every step, every eye movement, every motion of bony angles and spidery, graceful limbs. I press myself as flat against the wall as I can, maybe thinking that I could somehow pass through solid objects like she had done so many times before. No such luck for me, though.

A frightened, inane giggle somehow escapes my lips. It must look odd, considering my eyes are still wide open from shock. I mean, I'm not amused. Like, at all. But I can't help but look at this and think _holy fuck, I've gone absolutely mad. _Clamping my teeth together in a grimace, I narrow my eyes at Lark, who's looking too damn amused for her own good.

"What?" I manage to squeeze out, fighting the urge to run around the room screaming in a panic. "Go on, make a request, but you only get _one thing_, got it?"

"I can ask for anything I want?"

Damn her. Damn her. Damn her. I twist my hands free, slapping her arms away. "Within the limits of reason."

"What's this?" She cocks her head to the side, cupping one hand around her ear like she can't believe me. "A Storm Hawk, going against her word?"

"Well it's only logical!" I snap at her. "If you ask me to defy gravity I obviously won't be able to oblige you!"

"Heh. Fine by me."

A little shudder rolls through me, and I can see by the look in her eyes that she felt it, too. Secondhand, through looking around at my memories, but she felt it too. "So can you just ask and get it over with?" I say when the silence grows too long.

"I'm thinking," is all she says.

"Well think faster, you're creeping me out!"

One eyebrow quirks up at me but then she glances aside, frowning thinly. She really was thinking carefully about this, which only made me more nervous. Whatever she decides to come up with, it will not be something I like. Purple eyes flash, locking with mine again, and I have to remind myself this isn't really Lark I'm talking to. Maybe they shared certain memories, the same body, the same face… but there were definitely things about her that were different.

_Yeah, like she isn't completely evil_, I find myself thinking. _Or at the very least she doesn't want to kill me._

"Thank you, I try," Cyclonis murmurs to me, touching my face with the back of her fingers. Her expression is almost tender until she breaks out into a decidedly lecherous grin. "But you know, I bet with that little double of yours, we could have one hell of a time… God, so many possibilities here."

"Ugh! As if Perri would even-!" I turn my face away, ignoring the way the purple energy jumps from her hands onto my face, tingling as it travels downwards.

"Bah, we'd just tell her it's a ritual for some sort of crystal," she waves away my outburst with a flick of her hand. "She'd gobble that up, the airhead she is. OK then, I've decided!" she stands up straighter and I swear I can almost see the light bulb popping up over her head. I tense.

"I want…"

I clench my hands so tight my nails cut into my palms.

"…To stay here."

Wait, what? What does that mean?

"It means I want to stay here," she says, hands on her hips in a bossy pose. "And you can't ever kick me out or use that splicer on me."

I stare at her owlishly. Maybe I should be a little more freaked out at the prospect, but I had been so sure she'd ask something sexual of me I was preparing to.. Well.. I really don't know. "Oh. Uh. OK." I shake my head, beating at it with my palms. "Wait, no! Not OK! Why do you want to stay here?"

She doesn't answer, in fact even the smile is wiped from her face. She just looks at me, her mouth a straight, unreadable line.

"Well?"

"Not what you were expecting, was it?" she says. "Well, though my time with you seems to have me becoming more acclimatized to your memories rather than Cyclonis', I do still have that calculating core inside me." She smirks at me. "Why bother asking for something so trivial when staying here benefits me so much more in the long run?"

"I… I thought something trivial was what you wanted."

"No. No, it's not."

"Well…" I'm still staring at her, wide eyed, but I can't manage to stop. "…Uh.. OK."

TOK TOK TOK TOK!

"Hey, Piper?" _Aerrow_. "You OK?"

Shoving Lark aside, I open the door and recline against the frame, tensing up to keep my nervous jitters from becoming too obvious. "Uh, hey!" I say with a friendly tone that sounds false to my own ears. "What's up?"

"Nothing…" he says, every so often peering over my shoulder into the room. "You ran away pretty fast after Finn almost had his accident. Were you on the radio with someone?"

"Uh- no. Just… just- _ehhhcck_!" I make a decidedly inhuman noise somewhere between a shriek and a giggle (while simultaneously trying to suppress them both) as Lark chooses that very moment to put her arms around my waist- my _bare waist_, goddamnit I hadn't changed out of my bathing suit yet- and grab the flesh of my belly to squeeze it playfully. My hands shoot to cover hers, gripping them hard to make sure she doesn't do that again. I double over, managing to squeeze out, "S-stomach problems," to Aerrow before slamming the door shut.

Lark falls back onto my bed with one arm thrown across her face, shrieking with laughter.

_Any particular reason why you felt like tickling me in the middle of a conversation! _I shout at her mentally, afraid that Aerrow might still be listening. Furious, I stomp over to my drawer and pull a long shirt over my head and yank on a pair of shorts over my bathing suit before I do anything else, wanting to feel a little more covered in her presence.

She shrugs. "Nope. But hey, it got rid of him, didn't it? Nice excuse by the way." Glancing sideways at me, she returns her gaze to the ceiling with a smirk. "…That shirt makes you look like you're not wearing pants."

_Christ, you're hornier than Finn, you know that?_

"Can't help it," she says, a little dead pan. "I'm the discarded byproduct of two lonely teenagers with mind-numbing self control, only now I'm sans the self-control, what do you expect?"

_Try to at least have a little dignity if you're going to be staying here, then._

She brightens, sitting up straight and smiling at me. "So I can stay?"

I stare at her in disbelief, forgetting to even speak inside my mind. "Well, I made a promise, didn't I?" I ask her. "Just as long as you keep your hands off me, you hear? Cause there's only so much I'm willing to take."

"Baaah," she says, waving away my words again. "I don't even need to touch you to get you hot and bothered, so don't worry."

_Well of all the-! _I humph, glaring down at her with my arms crossed. _Well, someone thinks mighty highly of herself! You _aren't_ irresistible no matter how much you think otherwise, _Master_._

"I like it when you call me that," she says, eyes closing in a happy little shudder. "Do it again!"

I can't even think up a response to that, just pressing my fingers against my temple and trying to keep hold of my fragile sanity. "…No."

"C'mon. Once wouldn't be too embarrassing, would it?"

"Yes. Yes it would."

"Not as much as when you find out about my _awesome_ telekinetic arousal powers." She grins. "Which you will if you don't call me by my proper title from now on."

Now if she thinks I'm going to fall for that, she's got another thing coming. I could smell that trap from a mile away- I refuse to call her master, obviously, and she uses that as an excuse to do God-Knows-What. So I don't say anything at all, just cross my arms and glare at her in what I hope is a menacing manner.

"Clever girl," she says, under her breath. "Not curious in the least? What on Atmos could I possibly do-"

I twitch, a small, weird spasm running through my whole body. Shocked, I wrap my arms around myself and stop listening to what Lark is saying, frowning as I wait to see if that was some fluke or if it would happen again. It felt like my body _hiccupped_, if that makes any sense. It's only when it doesn't happen again that I manage to catch the last bit of what Lark was saying.

"It's not like I can, oh, I don't know, stroke the pleasure center of your brain or anything…"

I point at her, mouth agape in shock. "Did you just- that was you- you- …You're bluffing," though I stammer at first, I finish firmly, standing up straight with my hands at my side. She shrugs. And my body hiccups again, stronger this time. A thrill of fear shoots through me. "Stop that!" I snap, quivering.

"Stop what?" she says innocently.

"_Uhf_-" another involuntarily shudder cuts me off. "Y-you! S-stop- Stop- poking my brain! You might damage somethi-" I wince and bite my lip, whimpering once when she does it again. I had _felt_ something that time. Maybe if I just- I just _concentrated_, I could- "_Mmph_." I bang my forehead against the wall when it happens again. "No-" bang- "no-" bang- "_no_!" bang! What in the name of all that is good and holy is she _doing_ to me? And why would she- "_Nnn_…" -think I… think that I could _ever_… "_ahh…ahmmph_.."

I put my fist to my mouth, desperately trying to block out the sounds I was making- not that it does any good, of course, since she knows exactly the effect this is having on me. My knees slowly give way and I slide down the wall, face still pressed against the dented, cold metal. The room is quiet except for me, and for the steady clop of her footsteps on the metal floor as she walks over to me and squats so that we're at eye level.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I think she likes it."

I clench my teeth, closing my eyes. Normally I had complete control over my body- I was even trained to block out pain, and I tried doing that now. What results is an unpleasant limbo of feeling and not-feeling; every time I think I can break free and run out the door another wave of pleasure hits me, each one stronger than the last.

But when she actually puts her hands on me- warm hands cupping my face- I know I can't fight both at the same time. "Piper," she says, kissing my jaw line. "You're going to suffocate if you keep that up much longer."

I had been holding my breath. I didn't realize until she said it, but now I'm shaking with exertion, still rigid under her exploring hands, still holding my breath to keep from relaxing. When my lungs start to burn I squirm, thrashing, getting some of my strength back in my panic. But when I finally open my mouth, air whooshing in and out in heady pants, I make the mistake of looking directly into her purple eyes.

And for the first time, I'm inside her mind rather than the other way around.

And I see her, looking inside mine, looking inside hers… an endless, frightening, dizzying loop. The circle runs faster, each memory swirling together until it seems like I'm not even Piper anymore, not even physical anymore, almost like a spectator in my own life. And what's startling is that now I can see that Lark and I are completely enveloped inside a writhing mass of purple snakes, one set of them quite distinctly belonging to _me_.

Piper is trapped uncomfortably against the wall, sitting with Lark on top of her, pale hands gripping Piper's wrists to keep her from moving. She'd stopped 'poking' at Piper's brain for the moment, because Piper is still save for the shuddering rise and fall of her chest. "Is that…" Piper says, breathing labored. "Do you see… what I see?"

"Mm-hmm," Lark says, bumping foreheads with the other girl, staring unblinking into each other's eyes. Then I blink and it's over, I'm thrust back into my own body. "That's how I always see us," she says. "Almost always, anyway. Nice, isn't it?"

Swallowing, I hesitantly tilt my chin up and down in a nod.

TOK TOK TOK TOK!

I flinch.

"Piper?" Aerrow calls through the door, and I can practically hear the helpful cheeriness drip from his words. "I brought you some Pepto Bismol…"

"No one'll ever be able to know you like I do," Lark says against my ear, one hand under my shirt and tracing circles around my belly button.

"Pi-Perrr," Aerrow calls again. "Helloooo?"

My breath catches in my throat as her teeth press against the base of my neck. "So why don't you send him away…"

More insistent knocking. "I'm coming inside if you don't say anything!"

Purple eyes flashing with ill-contained humor. "…And we can pick up where we left off?"

Of course Lark sees my answer before I even say it, so she lets loose a soft chuckle before tenderly reaching deep inside my mind again. My head jerks back, a grin spreading across my face before I can stop it and then realize I don't want to stop it.

I clear my throat a little. "Aerrow?" I say. "I think I… n- _u__hmm_… n-need some time alone…"

**OoOoOo**

**A/N: **I can feel my brain cells oozing out of my ears.

God, I didn't even edit this.

Review, please.


End file.
